Watcher (15 page)

“Yeah?”

“I just wanted to mention that, uh, Conor is coming over.”

“
Conor
?”

“Yeah. I invited him for dinner. And I'd like a nice, pleasant meal without anyone bringing up things that might cause trouble.”

“Such as?” Like I didn't know.

“You know, like Daryl. You won't mention that I was out with him, will you?”

I was tempted to tell her, yeah, I
would
mention it. If she wanted to go around acting like some kind of skank, she should expect him to find out about it.

But then I got a flash of her that morning, bawling her head off with her whole body shaking and shuddering.

“Yeah, okay. Don't worry about it,” I said.

“Thanks!” She hugged me and looked relieved. “'Cause he should be here any minute.”

It was actually another twenty minutes before he showed up and by then Lynn had started to pace and run back and forth to the living room window to see if she could spot him coming along the sidewalk. I could tell she was getting worried that he wasn't coming.

I'd started to worry a bit myself. After all, if they patched things up she'd be moving back out. It hadn't been the worst thing in the world having her around, but I wouldn't be sorry to see her leave, either. Get things back to normal.

When Conor finally got there he had a bouquet of flowers for her. Lynn went on a bit more than necessary, considering it was just one of those cheap mixed bouquets from a grocery store. I heard her whisper, “You really
do
love me,” to him and that made me feel like speaking up and telling her she shouldn't need flowers to tell her that — she should know it from the fact that the guy had been putting up with her for years. But they were hugging and looking sappy so I kept it to myself.

We all sat down at the table then and Lynn started dishing up the food. I could see she'd done her best to make a fancy meal. Unfortunately, the cheese sauce was thick and lumpy and the vegetables she poured it over were limp and soggy. Besides that, she'd made scalloped potatoes which, judging by the burnt smell in the apartment, had boiled over in the oven. The last item on the table was ham — one of those round things sliced down the middle. She'd stuck pineapple slices all around the outside of it and at least it looked okay.

Conor told Lynn that the food smelled great, which it might have if we'd actually been able to smell it over the burned milk in the oven. He dragged me into the lie by adding, “doesn't it, Porter?”

“Yeah, great,” I said. Lynn started to stick her tongue out at me but rearranged it into a smile when Conor happened to glance over at her.

There was a lot of smiling going on, in fact, and a little hand-holding under the table. Lynn looked happy and I was glad for her. I just wished she hadn't gone out with that other guy. It made me feel like I was lying to Conor.

While we ate, Mom kept commenting about how nice it was to see Conor and what a good guy he was and how she'd always said so. Just a shade different from the tune she'd been singing when Lynn came home, as I recalled.

I wondered, a couple of times, how Conor could be sitting there swallowing all of this without realizing that something was a shade off. But it wasn't my problem and when I thought about it later, it occurred to me that maybe he
did
know, on some level, that things weren't quite genuine. And maybe he decided to just let whatever it was go, and play along with the act.

After we'd eaten, I called Tack's place, but his kid brother Lemon (his name is actually Lemuel but everyone calls him Lemon) told me he had gone somewhere with Teisha.

Suddenly restless, I couldn't see hanging around the apartment, so I decided to kick around the neighbourhood for a while, maybe drop by Pockets later on. I'd just started down the hall when Lynn called me back.

“Phone for you,” she said. “Some girl.”

“Hello?” I said, hoping it was Lavender. It was.

“You doing anything?” she asked.

“Not really. I was just going to take a walk, see if anyone was around.”

“Why don't you come by my place and I'll go with you.”

“Sure.” I hung the phone up and turned to see Lynn watching me with a dumb smile, like she knew a big secret. She caught me before I could get back out the door.

“Someone special?” she asked very softly. I knew she was keeping it down so Mom wouldn't start with the questions. She always gives me the third degree when I'm seeing someone.

“Just a girl,” I said. “She's okay.”

“Well, anyway, have a good time.” Then she hugged me, real quick.

It took me fifteen minutes or so to get to Lavender's place. I found her out in front of the building sitting on a bench waiting. She jumped up to meet me on the walk and something in her movement reminded me of the funny dance she'd done that afternoon.

“Hey,” I said when she got close. I could smell her shampoo.

“You rescued me,” she said, falling into step beside me. “My mom's gone to her sister's place for the evening and my dad rented an old movie. He was trying to persuade me to watch it with him.”

“Do you two watch movies together very often?”

“Yeah, sure. But it depends on the show. He talked me into watching
Apocalypse Now
one time and I swear it was the most depressing thing I've ever seen.”

“The
horror
!” I said, in what seemed to me a passable imitation of Brando in that film. It had been the only thing on TV one night, so I'd watched it. I thought it was pretty good.

Apparently, that particular part hadn't made much of an impression on Lavender. She looked at me nervously.

“From the movie,” I explained. “
Apocalypse Now
.”

“Oh, right.” She smiled but I could see she had something else on her mind. It didn't take long for her to bring it up.

“You religious or something?”

“Religious?” The question startled me. It was the last thing I'd expected from her. “Not really. I mean, I believe in God, I guess, but we don't go to church or anything.”

“I was just wondering, uh, about this afternoon.”

“You mean because I didn't get high with you?”

“Yeah. I know what you told me, but I thought there might have been more to it than that.”

“Nope. That was the whole thing. I had a bit of trouble with it a while back — I was messing up a lot. I had to quit.”

“Oh.” She fell silent for a minute. Then she said, “I don't toke that much.”

I wasn't sure what kind of response she was looking for there.

“Like, when I told Mick I'd smoked the whole gram, that wasn't true. I just wasn't passing it over to them. I still have more than half of it left.”

“Yeah? When did you get it?” If it was, like yesterday or something, that was nothing to brag about.

“I'm not sure. One day last week.”

The joint she'd smoked earlier had been slender enough that for sure she'd be getting six of them out of a gram. If she smoked three of them in a week that could still mean she was getting high every day, assuming she just smoked half at a time, like she had in the afternoon.

“Why?” It was like she could hear me thinking it through. “Is that a problem?”

“It's not a problem for me,” I said.

“I mean, I don't
have
to do it. I'm not a big stoner or anything.”

I thought of how cute she'd been doing her silly Roastin' the Ghetto Bootie dance. Of how she'd beckoned me to her on the balcony and how her mouth had parted lazily when I kissed her. I wondered how much of that was her and how much was the weed.

“If you were thinking of hanging around, that is,” she added, breaking into my thoughts.

“Yeah, I was — if you wanted me to,” I said. “And it's no big deal either way. I'm not telling anyone what to do.”

She smiled and stepped in a bit closer, touching the back of her hand against mine. I took hold of it, and right away she made her trademark little
Mmm
sound.

Everything was perfect. And then I saw him.

chapter twenty-two

I
must have stiffened up because Lavender turned to me right away with questioning eyes and asked what was wrong.

“That's the guy who's been following me,” I said, “the one coming out of Won Stop.”

Won Stop is a combination convenience store and Chinese take-out. Nothing fancy — just basic things like egg rolls, fried rice, chow mien, and stuff like that, ready to serve from a hot buffet table.

The Watcher had emerged from there with a newspaper rolled up under one arm and a brown paper bag clutched in the opposite hand. He gave himself away almost immediately by looking over at me. When he saw that I was staring straight at him, he looked away in a quick, jerky movement.

“That's your father?” Lavender asked.

“I don't know. Not for sure. But he's been following me for a while.”

“It
looks
like he's just getting something to eat,” she said doubtfully.

“That's the kind of thing he does to, you know, cover up. But I catch him all the time. He's a bit of an amateur.” Like I was used to being followed by professionals. “You keep watching and you'll see. He'll give himself away by looking at me.”

The words were hardly out of my mouth when he took another quick glance my way, just like he'd done a minute before.

“So, let's go talk to him,” she said.

“What?”

“Let's go talk to him. Tell him you know he's been watching you and find out what his game is. If that's your father, you want to know for sure, right?”

Something happened to my determination to talk to this guy. I
did
want to know, but my stomach clenched at the thought of talking to him. I suddenly realized that I wasn't as ready as I'd thought. Not yet.

“Hurry up,” Lavender urged, pulling me along with her, “he's going to get away.”

It was true he was walking quickly, heading toward my street. I figured he knew we'd made him, and he was planning the same dumb ruse he'd used before, pretending he lived in the building on my street.

“I'm pretty sure I know where he's headed,” I said, even though I knew full well that if he went into the building it would be hard to find him again until he came back out. That was fine with me. It would buy me time without forcing me to admit my reservations to Lavender.

But with her propelling me along we kept gaining on him. By the time he turned off the sidewalk toward the building (just as I'd predicted), he was only about ten feet ahead of us.

There was nothing I could do as Lavender dragged me forward, through the lobby and over to the elevators.

I have to say the guy looked nervous when we got into the elevator with him. Lavender nudged me and I knew she meant I should say something, but my throat had constricted and I couldn't have spoken if I'd wanted to, which I didn't.

We stopped at the seventh floor and, with an uneasy glance in our direction, the guy stepped off. Right behind him was Lavender, who didn't notice I hadn't followed until it was too late. Frozen in place, I caught a glimpse of her startled face as the doors slid the last couple of inches and closed completely. And then it was moving — a slight lurch and it continued upward with me still on board.

I swear, I hadn't planned to do that — it just worked out that way. So there I was, rising alone through the building, totally numb. It could have been happening to someone else.

I couldn't believe how close I'd just come, or that, after spending so much time thinking about it, I'd (I might as well admit it) chickened out at the last second. The hard part was that — if that
was
my father — I had no idea what to expect. I'd never sat down in a room with him. We'd never had a conversation — not that I could remember, anyway.

All I knew was that he was a horrible person who'd mistreated me and Lynn. That was about the sum of it. Oh, yeah, and, as I'd heard many times, he'd never paid child support. Seems that for years every time I asked for
anything
that was the reason I couldn't have it.

Money didn't matter much at the moment, but the rest of it did. I was interested in knowing why he'd done the things he'd done, and then walked out and never even dropped a postcard in the mail, or picked up the phone to say hi.

But I had other questions, too. Like, had he taken me and Lynn to the zoo? Had we raced giraffes?

And, had we ever finger painted together? I don't know where that one came from, but it was in my head and I figured I might as well ask if I ever got the chance.

And what would I
call
him, if he was my father? Dad? Steve? Mr. Delancy? Nothing felt right but maybe something would if we were ever face-to-face.